


Can't Do This To Me, Baby

by DWEmma



Series: Anya Causes Music [2]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen (Song), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Queen (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29993073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/pseuds/DWEmma
Summary: Anya tries to do a vengeance spell on Freddie Mercury from a jilted lover, causing him to embarass himself on stage, but instead he fights her magic to create one of the strangest and iconic rock songs of all time. But Xander will never know about it.Is this song fic, or is this just fantasy...
Relationships: Xander Harris/Anya Jenkins
Series: Anya Causes Music [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206215





	Can't Do This To Me, Baby

**Author's Note:**

> The Anya causes music series isn't in chronological order, from the flashback moments or the flash forward moments. They can be read in any order.

It was a hot night in July of 1975 when Anyanka found herself working the room for vengeance at some sort of royal concert. Well, no, that wasn’t quite right. She realized once she was there that there were no royals present: just a band named Queen. Which was probably good, due to a slow acting subtle curse someone named Camilla asked her to put on the prince. (That if he ever married anyone else, that his heir to the throne would grow up to be ugly.) 

But this was a different sort of Queen. The lead singer was clearly a siren, which always made for a good show, like with that charming David Bowie she’d met through that Grimslaw Demon. But she hated being asked to do a wish against sirens. Too much magnetism to make the wish work out well. 

But anyway, that’s what happened. Usually the plight of groupies was nothing she wanted to tangle with. But this poor boy had his heart broken. Anyanka didn’t understand how everyone couldn’t see the lead singer’s lack of gender preference when it came to sex, but apparantly he was closeted even to his band members, and this poor boy had tried to secretly shine in Freddie’s love just enough to get burned by him. And so yes, she was meant to work with women, but cruel male bastards were cruel male bastards, weren’t they? 

They were on a balcony that wrapped around the edge of the stage so they were basically looking down on top of Freddie’s head when he wished that Freddie would make a fool of himself and mess up one of his songs in front of everyone so people would see what a loser he actually was. 

“Done,” replied Anyanka, which was all well and good, but it was tricky doing vengeance on sirens, since she was susceptible to their thrall. She couldn’t get too close. But she figured if he was performing, there’d be enough distractions that he couldn’t fight off the curse. Though witnesses always made things tricky. But a job was a job. 

But as she started working her magic, getting her client’s justice for him, she felt Freddie fighting her careful work. His siren powers came out full force, and between songs he seemed to react to her ministrations using his siren’s song to keep his control. His band mates looked baffled, but they took his lead as he began to encant...

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see,”

And that was when he looked directly above him and made eye contact with Anyanka, letting her know he could feel her justice trying to destroy his performance. He glanced over at his lover, and then back at Anyanka, and she knew he knew. But then he let out a wicked grin and sang again.

“I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy because I'm easy come, easy go, little high, little low, any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me.” 

“But this is gorgeous,” moaned the poor jilted boy. “You’re not making him mess up at all. He kicked the side of the balcony and then cried. Ugh, this was why Anyanka didn’t work with men as clients. They’re too sensitive. 

Freddie kept going, mocking the boy. “Mama, just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead. Mama, life had just begun, but now I've gone and thrown it all away.” 

By this point the whole room was completely in his thrall. If he’d wanted an orgy, he could have gotten an orgy, even with Anyanka working against him. But what he wanted was to turn this curse, this attempt to make him mess up into something historic, something bizarre, and something memorable. And felt a little bad for the boy, if the lyrics meant anything. 

Anyanka wasn’t going to have it. If he was going to fight it, the least she could do was force him to say sorry to his victim. So she pushed him, and he relented a little. 

“Mama, ooh. Didn't mean to make you cry. If I'm not back again this time tomorrow carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters.”

And that was nice and all, but she needed more. She twisted the spell just a little. He could fight it, but it would make him hurt. 

“Too late, my time has come. Sends shivers down my spine, body's aching all the time. Goodbye everybody, I've got to go gotta leave you all behind and face the truth Mama, ooh I don't wanna die. I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all…”

And he stopped singing. And his guitarist picked up on the gap and started playing...something. Anyanka did feel bad for the band. They weren’t in need of justice. Well, they were men, so they probably were. Oh well. There were sometimes casualties. He was really jamming, though. This was a great time to see if she could try something new with a spell. Maybe if he thought he was being haunted it would distract him more. She took the shape of the boy he’d hurt and projected it above the crowd, as if it were floating above the crowd’s head right at Freddie. She added an indoor storm to make it more ominous. And he began to sing. 

“I see a little silhouetto of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango? Thunderbolt and lightning very very frightening me.” 

Anyanka felt pretty proud that at least he was sounding insane. But she looked down at the crowd, and they were even more in his thrall. Ugh. This was getting embarrassing. At least no one who mattered was there to witness her failure. 

But as she looked around, she made eye contact with another vengeance demon. He liked to punish religious crimes, and took the name Galileo. And it looked like Freddie knew him. And now he had his band singing alternating lyrics with him, also under his thrall. 

At first they were just singing Galileo over and over. They were mocking her. They were calling over someone who could go to D'Hoffryn and tell him about her failure. And then they began to mock her. 

“I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me. He's just a poor boy from a poor family. Spare him his life from this monstrosity.”

She decided that this was enough. She pushed harder into the spell, spreading it over the band. Spreading the knowledge that it was Freddie’s fault, and their only way out was to turn on him. 

“Easy come easy go, will you let me go?”

And to Anyanka’s pleasure, he and his band mates fought for control like the men they were. She particularly liked the part where they sang “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” and “Mama mia, let me go,” because she loved to hear the cries as she tortured someone, even if those cries were harmonizing, melodious in song. 

And then came the empty threats. “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.” Sure, Freddie, Anyanka thought. She knew Beelzebub. He hated sirens. Classic narcissist:, didn’t like having around anyone more likable than him. He had nothing put aside for Freddie. She shook her head at him and wouldn’t relent. 

“So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?” he sang at her. She shrugged. So Freddie turned to his spurned lover. “So you think you can love me and leave me to die?” he sang. “Oh, baby. Can't do this to me, baby. Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here.” 

Anyanka was nervous at this point. If it ever gets to the point where the lover gets to appeal to the one who did the wish, they sometimes regret it. They sometimes fold. But honestly, this spell was so terrible and ineffective, he wasn’t going to get the pity he needed. The boy shook his head at Freddie. 

Freddie sighed in song. “Nothing really matters, anyone can see. Nothing really matters. Nothing really matters to me.” 

Anyanka blew off the remains of the spell and got the hell out of there before Galileo found her to start making fun of her. What a disaster this had all been. 

As the band felt the release of the failed spell, they sang, “Any way the wind blows…” and received thunderous applause. 

Ugh. Anyanka hated royalty. 

*********

Twenty-five years and a cracked amulet later, it was movie night, and Anya was mildly amused by the characters of Wayne and Garth were amusing. Possibly less amusing with Xander quoting most of the lines along with it to the point where Buffy started throwing popcorn at him every time he did it. (Popcorn that usually ended up bouncing onto her.) What did “Schwing” mean, anyhow? And Buffy and Willow kept having side conversations about all sorts of things, which made the movie hard to hear. But when they got to the scene where they headbanged to a strange song, something triggered in her brain. It was the spell. The failed spell. She hadn’t thought of that in years. She had some initial embarrassment, but then she realized how historically significant her curse had been, and thought that this was something that friends would share with each other. 

“Oh! When I was a vengeance demon…” she burst out, only to be cut off. 

“Honey, no one wants to hear your vengeance stories,” Xander hiss/whispered at her. And Buffy and Willow nodded agreement. 

Anya kept it to herself. Obviously she’d done the wrong thing again, been a bad girlfriend, been a bad human. She’d talked the wrong way during the movie. She would try to keep her mouth shut until she got better at being human.


End file.
